Kucinich Initiates Bush Impeachment!

Political convenience impedes the normal course of the law

With the characteristic indifference of mass media, and against the majority of his party, the congressional Democrat from Ohio Dennis Kucinich, presented the 35 articles of Constitutional accusation to the Congress – in English known as Impeachment – against Bush on June 9th.

However, with the majority of votes of his 251 fellow Democrats (166 of the remaining votes were Republican) the Congress immediately resolved to send the accusation to the Justice Committee, where presumably it will have the same luck as other attempts: it shall die a death of asphyxiation in the dust of forgetfulness.

To send the legislation to a committee dominated by his own party is a political maneuver that permits the proposal to be banished to a legislative limbo, freezing the measure for an indefinite time.

The 166 votes in favor of commencing the debate in Congress were from Republicans that saw the political opportunity to expose the Democrats and drag them into a discussion that would be considered futile in the middle of an actual crisis.

The resolution known as HR1258 was sponsored by the Congressmen

Tammy Baldwin, Sam Farr, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Maurice Hinchey y Robert Wexler. In the country’s history Congress has initiated this type of process twice: against Andrew Johnson in 1868 and against Bill Clinton in 1999. On both occasions the Senate discontinued them and that ended the mandate.

In order for the charges to be registered in the annals of Congress, Kucinich read the document in its entirety. The accumulated evidence is enough to replace any president in any country in the world governed by legal codes. However, the majority of the Democrats, including the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, were not in agreement with the Constitutional accusation, arguing that this process does not have any possibility of winning and would be divisive.

The Democrats measure the consequences of the Impeachment in political terms: such a movement would generate a backlash from its allies on the right, rearticulate and energize the affair and put in danger the Democratic triumph in November. In this case, politics prevail over the law.

If you were a witness of a crime and you did not inform the police, you would be considered as an accessory or an accomplice. The Democrats prefer to turn their back on the law and the very Constitution they claim to defend. The resolution proposed by Kucinich represents an exhaustive list of the illegalities and atrocities committed by the Bush regeme that will be registered in the parliamentary archives and will serve as predecessor for future legal actions against functionaries implicated in the regimen.

A great part of the articles introduced during the five hours by the congressman and ex presidential candidate, have to do with the fabricated falsifications by the regime for bringing the country to war against Iraq with the national laws and international violations in the process and with the illegal detention of numerous people.

The accusatory articles also include the falsification of statistics of the war’s victims, mortal responsibilities in cases of national emergency- Hurricane Katrina-and illegalities in the passing of declarations signed by the President and laws approved by the legislature that were not pleasing.

In 2007, Kucinich introduced a similar accusation against Vice President Dick Cheney, the measure was also sent to the Justice Committee where its president, the Democrat John Conyers, has not done anything.

The lonely action of Kucinich is the most “complete chronology of the numerous crimes (and war crimes) of the most mercenary, deceiving, and corrupt president in the history of the United States. It is an important document which establishes for history a litany of abuses of power and crimes committed for almost eight years by the dreadful government of George Bush. It is an official Congressional declaration of acts, that will be of much use in the future”, wrote the commentator Joseph A Palermo on the Huffington Post Blog, (July 1, 2008).

Everyone knows that the democrats “don’t have the courage to constitutionally accuse Bush. They realized the cynical political calculation some time ago”. Palermo concludes that the republic shall not be able to bear a succession of tyrannical presidents that continue in Bush’s path and permanently imbalance the Constitutional powers. The future shall judge this moment as a significant moment towards fascism in the country.

The key question for Palermo is: If Bush does not deserve Impeachment then what shall a president have to do? Perhaps the international community will have the final work. “One must hope, concludes Palermo, that in the distant future, Bush might lower his guard and decide to take a vacation in England where he might be arrested, as happened to Augusto Pinochet”.